Day 5: Peace through TRUTH

LESSON #5: IGNORANCE=STRESS & TRUTH=PEACE

How IGNORANCE causes STRESS:

By ignorance I simply mean lack of truth. So much of our daily reality is actually not reality at all, but stories we've made up about ourselves, experiences, others, and the world. And many of these untrue beliefs and thoughts, are parading around your mind as truth, and perpetuating your stress every single day.

Let me tell you a personal story I haven't really shared publicly. Four years ago, when my boyfriend moved in with me, we started having a lot of problems. I was crazy stressed out in the relationship, having low grade anxiety and depression all the time, and it was affecting every area of my life!

I was at the point where I felt like we needed to call it quits. But the thing was, I still loved him, and deep down I wasn't sure ending it was the right thing to do.

I had already been meditating for years at that point, so I turned to my practice for help. And what I realized was, I had only been meditating for relaxation. So anytime I'd feel stress or anxiety, I'd simply turn to my breath practice (or some other relaxation technique) to shift my focus away from my pain and induce peace.

This relaxation method definitely helped me shift my stress and anxiety so I could function decently in my day, but it was a very temporary fix. And eventually I was back to the same panicked, anxious, depressed emotional state, I started at. This up and down cycle went on for months.

Just as I was about to throw in the towel, I had a game-changing realization!

What I eventually realized was, when you use your meditation practice only for relaxation, you're never really addressing your problem at the root. You're simply using your practice as a superficial band-aid, so the stress is gonna keep coming back over and over again.

To heal your stress and anxiety for good, you've got to get to the root of your stress and heal it there.

I call this "meditation for transformation". It's a much deeper process than meditation for relaxation, but will allow you to heal your stress and anxiety for good!

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TRUTH creates PEACE:

So how did I heal my stress and anxiety in my relationship? I did it by uncovering those false stories I had created in my head (my ignorance) and finding the TRUTH.

This is how you heal stress through the power of truth:

1) Stop being a victim, and start taking full responsibility for your pain, emotions, and problems.

For me, this meant that I had to stop blaming my boyfriend for causing my anxiety, stress, and depression. And I had to realize that I played a role in creating it too.

2) Start uncovering the false stories you've created, that are keeping you stuck and stressed.

I noticed I had the tendency to take every single one of his actions personally and create a disempowering (and untrue) story around it (he must not love me; I'm not good enough; he's purposely hurting me, etc.). Then those false stories posing as truths in my head fed my anger, anxiety, stress, and reactionary behaviors.

Once I was able to see which of my stories (aka. thoughts and beliefs) weren't true, I was able to uncover the truth, and thus change my own thoughts and actions, that were keeping me stuck and stressed.

This process of separating false stories from truth, helped me heal the intense anxiety and stress my relationship was causing. But this process can be applied to ANY AREA of your life, where you feel stuck! Health, money, career, etc.

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TAKE ACTION:

NOTE: this is a bit more advanced than meditation for relaxation (like we did in day 1). If you're not ready to take responsibility for your pain and problem, and not ready to get to the root of it, that's ok! Go back to the day 1 focus practice and continue doing that and other types of relaxation meditation techniques. I practiced relaxation meditation for awhile before I felt ready to go deeper.

But if your at least a little curious and open about the next stage of using meditation to deeply transform those stuck patterns and areas of your life, try the practice below.

JOURNALING (or free writing)

Journaling is one very powerful practice to help you get out of your ego mind (which is generating those false stories), and help you connect to your intuition so you can uncover truth.

**Some difficult emotions may come up during this, so you may want to do this when you have some space to rest and self-care afterwards.

1. Grab a pen and paper and focus yourself with some mindful breathing (from day 1) until you feel grounded.
2. First declare, "I am safe experiencing these emotions. I am ready for the truth. The truth will set me free!"
3. Then say "I admit I have played a role in creating this stuck and stressful situation. And thus I take responsibility, so I can take back my power and create change and peace"
4. With your eyes closed, bring to mind an area of your life where you feel stuck. Just like we did in day 2. Take the time do visualize it and feel it.
5. Notice what thoughts are present for you and begin to write them down. All of them. Don't sensor or judge yourself, just write what wants to come out!
6. Then go back through each one, and ask yourself, "Is this true??". "Is there any possibility this is not true?"
7. Circle the true ones and cross out the false story ones.
8. Then go back to all the true ones, say them, and see if they feel empowering or disempowering. The ones that feel disempowering likely still have false story attached.
9. Thank yourself for doing the work, and if you'd like, practice some gratitude to lift your vibe before you wrap up. You're doing a great job!!

You can revisit those thoughts and go through the process again and see if anything new comes up. This is a process and you won't uncover the truth all at once! But the more you do the work, the more you'll uncover and the faster you'll find lasting peace!

Peace, love, and a consistent practice,

Dana

Day 4: Peace through SELF-CARE

LESSON #4: SELF-NEGLECT = STRESS & SELF-CARE = PEACE

SELF-NEGLECT causes STRESS:

Another huge way you feed your stress is by neglecting self-care, aka. not honoring your needs and personal boundaries.

I was on the phone with a client a while back, and we were discussing her stress and anxiety. One major way stress was showing up for her, was by her snapping at employees. As we dug deeper, we uncovered a lot of boundary and self-care neglect going on that was causing her stress, and to snap at employees.

Examples of self-neglect and boundary issues that will feed your stress:

• overcommitting yourself
• lax boundaries with others
• not enough sleep
• not enough mental rest (aka. meditation)
• not enough physical activity
• poor eating and water drinking habits
• overconsumption of mind-altering substances (coffee, alcohol, etc.)

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SELF-CARE creates PEACE:

Stress caused by self-neglect is healed through SELF-CARE. The tricky thing is, there's no one size fits all self-care protocol. There are general guidelines, but everyone's stress-point around sleep, diet, boundaries, etc. will be different.

I tend to be extremely sensitive so my threshold for self-neglect is very low. Which means it doesn't take much to push me out of balance (in any of those categories above) to a point where my health, work, and relationships begin to suffer.

Some of you may have a higher threshold for self-neglect, where you can get away with less self-care and still operate at a level you're happy with. But either way it's important to to know and honor your personal boundaries.

Peace through self-care comes when you can:

• figure out the point at which YOU get imbalanced and experience stress (in each of the categories I mentioned above), and
• be diligent about honoring those boundaries! (this could be saying no to things; asking for help; hiring help; creating better habits around diet, exercise, sleep, and meditation; etc.)

TAKE ACTION:

1. STOP feeding your STRESS HABIT: Begin to notice when you reach a self-care boundary (in each category above). {hint: some symptom of mental/emotional stress will be the trigger. If you get to a point where a physical symptom presents, then you're likely waaaay over your self-care boundary.}

2. START feeding your PEACE HABIT: In most cases you neglect self-care because you don't respect how important it truly is in your life, or you don't feel worthy of it. Either way, you've got to start giving yourself permission to take time for whatever self-care you need for peace.

   • Do an honest check-in with yourself on your level of self-care. Go through each of the categories above ask yourself, does my lack of self care here cause me stress symptoms?

     • "PERMISSION MEDITATION" (7 minutes): If you find that you neglect self-care a lot in your life, do this guided visualization to help you prioritize it.

Peace, love, and a consistent practice,

Dana

P.S. You can access all past days here. Password: "PEACE" (all caps).

P.P.S. To connect with others going through this 5 day experience + to get your questions answered by me, join the "Meditate with Ease" Facebook group here!

P.P.P.S Don't forget to book your free 1:1 session here. I look forward to supporting you!

Day 3: Peace Through SELF-COMPASSION

LESSON #3: SELF-JUDGEMENT=STRESS & SELF-COMPASSION=PEACE

RESISTANCE causes STRESS:

Another major way we feed our stress is through self-judgment. This shows up as things like self-loathing, perfectionism, shame, and guilt. As a culture we've got deep rooted habits around this constant self-judgement!

We throw the word love around a lot, but when it comes to ourselves, our love tends to be extremely conditional. And when we don't live up to our own impossible conditions, our inner mean girl comes out and we beat ourselves up with negative self talk, and self-sabotaging behaviors. And this simply feeds our stress.

You'll notice those self-judgement behaviors show up when:

• you make a mistake,
• you don't reach your goals quick enough or good enough (ie. career, relationship, money, health, etc.), or
• you fall back into a bad habit, once!

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SELF-COMPASSION creates PEACE:

The way to heal stress fueled by self-judgement is through self-compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love.

And since you're here, I have a feeling you're drive for healing, growth, and personal success causes you to be very hard on yourself. And embracing this concept of self-compassion may be your top peace struggle!

But know that there is nothing wrong with you! Self-judgement is a learned trait in our culture and therefore can be unlearned over time, with practice!

Below are some powerful ways to practice it on and off the meditation cushion.

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TAKE ACTION:

1. STOP feeding your STRESS HABIT: Start to notice your tendency to judge yourself throughout your day and even when you meditate.

2. START feeding your PEACE HABIT: One of the simplest (yet most powerful) ways to shift from the stress-inducing energy of self-judgment to the peace-inducing energy of self-compassion, is through GRATITUDE.

   • GRATITUDE PRACTICE: Your practice today is to simply focus yourself (try some mindful breathing like we did in day 1) and sit quietly for 5 minutes, bringing to mind something you're grateful for about yourself or in your life. Visualize it and really feel the sensations and emotions of that love and gratitude.

   • OPTIONAL: If you want, you can go back and do the "Breath Meditation" from day 1 before doing your gratitude practice.

**Remember, there is ALWAYS something to be grateful for. If you struggle to find something, you're simply blocking yourself from seeing it. So take a deep breath, smile, maybe get outside in nature, and allow your gratitude to bubble up.

Peace, love, and a consistent practice,

Dana

P.S. You can access all past days here. Password: "PEACE" (all caps).

P.P.S To connect with others going through this 5 day experience + to get your questions answered by me, join the "Meditate with Ease" Facebook group here!

Day 2: Peace Through ACCEPTANCE

Welcome to Day 2 of "The Peace Practice"! Today we'll be discussing the power of ACCEPTANCE. But first let me introduce you to her stress-inducing doppelganger, "RESISTANCE".

LESSON #2: RESISTANCE=STRESS & ACCEPTANCE=PEACE

RESISTANCE causes STRESS:

Another major way you feed your stress, is through resisting what is. As humans, we tend to cling to pleasurable experiences and resist uncomfortable ones, forgetting that pain (physical and emotional) is a very natural (and often necessary) part of life and growth. And since there's no escaping pain, your resistance to it only serves to feed your stress.

ACCEPTANCE creates PEACE:

Stress caused by resistance is healed through ACCEPTANCE and surrender to what is. Avoiding painful emotions or challenging situations with distractions, may help you numb out temporarily, but it won't create lasting peace.

Peace comes when you can:

• Surrender to exactly where you are on your journey (even while you're working towards change), and
• Accept the "good" and "bad" equally, trusting that they both play an important part in your life and growth.

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TAKE ACTION:

1. STOP feeding your STRESS HABIT: Begin to notice when you resist an uncomfortable emotion, physical sensation, or a situation in your life. {hint: you'll know because your pain and stress will expand the longer you resist it}
2. START feeding your PEACE HABIT: One way you can cultivate more peace through acceptance is by beginning to reframe your pain or "problems" as opportunities for growth, learning, and healing. Below there's a 10 minute "acceptance meditation" to get you started.

**A few important notes before you do this meditation:

You gain a lot of power over your life once you start accepting (and non-judgmentally experiencing) the pain you've been resisting (like we began to do in the "acceptance meditation" yesterday). But it's often not an easy path of healing, and it can bring up lots of suppressed and resisted emotions that are ready to be released.

***So if you're dealing with some really painful circumstances in your life (a new break-up, trauma, etc.),

• Please be sure to give yourself plenty of space and self-care when doing this "acceptance meditation" + any work around acceptance in general. 
• Take breaks from "doing the work", to allow your mind to rest. You can use the "Breath Meditation" you learned in day 1 for this.
• And get support if it's too much for you to work through on your own! (feel free to message me and we can talk through this or I can refer someone to you).

Peace, love, and a consistent practice,

Dana

P.S. To connect with others going through this 5 day experience + to get your questions answered by me, join the "Meditate with Ease" Facebook group here!

Day 1: Peace Through FOCUS

LESSON #1: DISTRACTION=STRESS  &  FOCUS=PEACE

DISTRACTION causes STRESS:

One of the main ways you feed your stress, is by spending too much time mentally distracted from the present moment.

This could show up as things like, constantly distracting from the present by:

• dwelling on the past,
• worrying or obsessing about the future,
• or simply multi-tasking and trying to do (or think about) too many things at once.

FOCUS creates PEACE:

Research shows that your mind actually functions most optimally, when FOCUSING on one thing at a time. Through the power of FOCUS, peace is possible in any moment or situation, if you simply notice the stress-inducing distraction and choose to bring your mind back to the present moment.

While there's a time and place for reflecting on the past and planning for the future, those things should be done consciously and skillfully....not mindlessly and fearfully throughout the day.

TAKE ACTION:

1. STOP feeding your STRESS HABIT: Begin to notice when your mind wanders from the present moment to the past or future OR when you're doing (or thinking) about more than 1 thing at a time.
2. START feeding your PEACE HABIT: Cultivate more MENTAL FOCUS with this simple "Breath Meditation". (12 minute guided practice)

With such a chaotic and noisy world around us, cultivating more mental focus may feel difficult at first. Know that with practice, you'll get better and better over time!

Peace, love, and a consistent practice,

Dana

P.S. To connect with others going through this 5 day experience + to get your questions answered by me, join the "Meditate with Ease" Facebook group here!